Frequently Asked Questions

DoubleShield is a two-layered protection solution designed to protect your important accounting data from viruses infection, ransomware, human errors and sabotages.

On the first layer, DoubleShield provides automated backup of your accounting data to off-site servers, saving multiple versions of your files, where you can access and restore them when necessary. As the backup is set to run daily and automatically, you don’t need to worry about the hassles of doing manual backup or forgetting to backup.

DoubleShield’s second layer of protection is equipped with the snapshots feature, checking out copies of your backup (from the first layer) and store them in different timestamps. Without access for user to edit or remove anything, this second protection layer prevents any user sabotages or ransomware infection to all the original snapshot copies, allowing you to restore versions of your accounting backup files to a specific time prior to the ransomware infection or sabotages.

Google Drive and Dropbox are meant for file collaboration with file versioning, which is also provided in DoubleShield’s first layer of protection. However, the main difference lies at the second layer of protection, not available in Google Drive and Dropbox, where DoubleShield uses the snapshot technology to protect your accounting backup files from ransomware and sabotages. File versioning isn’t the solution to a proper backup as you can see from the next FAQ below.

Some may argue that file versioning is good enough. However, do take note that Google/Dropbox file versioning is limited to only 30 days. Any versions older than 30 days will be deleted forever. We have also tested on Google Drive with file versioning and found out that after the 100th version, the very first version of the file will be gone. This very first version could be the only genuine copy which you need that is not corrupted/locked by the Ransomware.

Even with unlimited versions like Dropbox, ransomware could also generate hundreds of thousands of versions that the uninfected versions would be buried deep down. It would probably take you days or weeks of scrolling from page to page before you could reach that version. That’s if you could continuously click for the next page (every page has 20 versions) non-stop until you reach your file, as you may be automatically logged out if you left it idle for too long.

You may ask, can ransomware really change my files 100 thousands times? Possibly, given enough time and the efficient synchronization of Dropbox, as ransomware can go stealth for quite some time changing your backup files before it strikes your functioning database files.

Or the ransomware may decide to stay stealth for more than 30 days, so your last genuine version of the accounting backup has been deleted by the Dropbox/Google Drive, before it strikes and leave you with all the corrupted backup copies and versions.

Or the ransomware may decide to change your file names and create thousands of garbage files so you are not able to identify which is the file with the right working version.

Or the ransomware may delete your backup file on the desktop, and make it disappear from your dropbox.

If your PC is infected with Ransomware, all your files in the PC are probably already infected. Worse is if when you try to back up to your USB thumb drive or external hard drive, you are basically allowing the ransomware to infect all the good backup files you have previously stored there. The ransomware can go stealth and lock up all your backup files in the thumb drive or external hard drive before unlocking your Accounting database files in the PC, and you are left with all corrupted or locked files.

This is in fact an easier target for the ransomware as your NAS or backup PC/Server is constantly connected via the network. Ransomware could easily lock all these non-active files before locking your main accounting database files, and left you with no backup files and a ransom note.

No, DoubleShield is not an anti-virus software. However, both DoubleShield and anti-virus software have the same ultimate objective – to protect the user. While anti-virus software protects the user’s devices from malicious software and malware, most of them do not provide data backup and recovery features. DoubleShield, on the other hand, has user’s data backed up and allows them to perform data restore in the event of hard disk failure, system corruption, human errors, sabotages, and most notably, ransomware attacks.

To put it simply: ransomware could ruin your business. Being locked out of your own files by malware for even just a day will bring impact on your revenue. Given that ransomware takes most victims offline for at least a week, or sometimes months, the losses can be significant. Systems go offline for so long not just because ransomware locks the system, but because of all the effort required to clean up and restore the networks.And it isn’t just the immediate financial hit of ransomware which will damage a business; consumers become wary of giving their data to organisations they believe to be insecure.

Please send in your inquiry with the type of files and what they are for via our Contact Form, as the current Pricing Plan is only meant for Accounting Data backup and the more popular HR and Payroll Data backup.

DoubleShield Snapshot is the second protection layer for your Accounting Backup Files. It is a backup copy that allows you to restore your data to a specific point of date and time, namely the last 7 days, the last 4 weeks, the last 12 months, and the last 7 years from the present. Therefore the 2nd protection layer of DoubleShield will hold up to a maximum of 30 backup snapshot copies.

At DoubleShield second protection layer, the system keeps snapshot backup copies for the last

7 days with 1 snapshot each day

4 weeks with 1 snapshot each week

12 months with 1 snapshot each month

7 years with 1 snapshot each year

Therefore, after 7 days of using DoubleShield you will get 7 snapshot backups. After one month you will get 11 snapshot backups. After one year, you will get 23 snapshot copies.And after 7 years you will get 30 snapshot backups.

In the event of ransomware infection, you most likely will be restoring from one of the good original snapshot copies in the last 7 days. There may be other situations that you want to restore your accounting files to a specific week, month, or year and these snapshot backups will come in handy.

After logging in from the first layer backup center, click on the user icon on top right of the screen and select [ Settings ]. Then, from the left menu panel, click on [ Security ]. Enter the current password and new password into the given fields and click [ Change password ] to save the new password.

After changing the password from the web portal, remember to change it on your client software too, to prevent missed backup. Launch your DoubleShield client software from your PC and click on [ Account ] -> [ Log out ]. Your account will be logged out from the client software. Now, click on [ Account ] -> [ Log in ], and enter your DoubleShield username and the new password into the fields. Click [ Log in ], and on the next screen, click [ Grant Access ].

All DoubleShield subscribers will receive an email with all login information. You can access the link from the email, and log in with the provided second-layer (Time Vault/Snapshots) username and password.

You can restore your data using the daily backup file, which is accessible from the first-layer Backup Center. If, undesirably, the backup file resided in the first-layer is not usable, you still have a second option – which is to access your snapshots from the second-layer Time Vault. From there, look for the suitable version of your file and download it. You can then restore the data using the downloaded file.